The Democratic nominee, Mr. Alton B. Parker, failed to elicit any enthusiasm in the rank and file of the party. He had supported the Democratic candidate at a time when many of his conservative friends had repudiated Mr. Bryan altogether, and thus he could not be branded as a "bolter." But Mr. Parker's long term of service as judge of the highest court of New York, his remoteness from actual partisan controversies, his refusal to plunge into a whirlwind stumping campaign, and his dignified reserve, all combined to prevent his getting a grip upon the popular imagination. His weakness was further increased by the half-hearted support given by Mr. Bryan who openly declared the party to be under the control of the "Wall Street element," but confessed that he intended to give his vote to Mr. Parker, although the latter, in a telegram to the nominating convention at St. Louis, had announced his unflinching adherence to the gold standard. The Democratic platform, except in its denunciation of the Republican administration, was as indefinite as the occasion demanded. Independence should be promised to the Filipinos at the proper time and under proper circumstances; there should be a revision and gradual reduction of the tariff by "the friends of the masses"; United States Senators should be elected by popular vote; combinations and trusts which restrict competition, control production, or fix prices and wages should be forbidden and punished by law. The administration of Mr. Roosevelt was denounced as "spasmodic, erratic, sensational, spectacular, and arbitrary," and the proposal of the Republican platform to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment was condemned as "Bourbon-like, selfish, and narrow," and designed to kindle anew the embers of racial and sectional strife. Constitutional, simple, and orderly government was promised, affording no sensations, offering no organic changes in the political or economic structure, and making no departures from the government "as framed and established by the fathers of the Republic." * * * * *